Kafr Qasim massacre
The Kfar Kassem massacre took place in the Israeli Arab village of Kfar Kassem (multiple transliterations possible: Kafr/Kfar/Kfur/Qfar Kassem/Qassem/Qasim/al-Qassim, etc) October 29, 1956. It was carried out by the Israeli Border Police and resulted in 49 dead, including 15 women and 11 children aged 8 to 15.
On that day, the 1956 Suez War had just begun. Though Jordan was not involved in the war, a 5 p.m. to dawn curfew was declared on all the Arab villages in the area close to the Jordanian border. However, the village head was informed of the curfew only half an hour before the order went into effect, and many of the villagers were still at work in their fields. When asked what would happen to them, the Border Police battalion commander Shmuel Melinki responded Allah yirahmu (may God have mercy on them. As the villagers returned after 5 p.m., they were shot dead by Israeli Border Police.
According to Melniki, he was given the order to kill the villagers by brigade commander Issachar Shadmi, but Shadmi denied it. Melniki claimed that "the order was not of a kind that did not conform to the spirit of the times".
The initial reaction of the Israeli government was to impose strict censorship on the incident, while conducting an internal enquiry. However, some private individuals and one communist member of the Knesset managed to publicise the event despite the censorship. The resulting court-martial sentenced eleven Border Police to lengthy prison terms, but all of them were out of prison by November 1959 due to presidential pardons or remissions.
Soon after his release, Melniki was promoted and put in charge of security for the Dimona nuclear reactor. Shadmi was found guilty of a minor administrative offence and fined a token amount (a small coin). Financial compensation was paid to the families of the victims.
As a result of the Kfar Kassem case, the Israeli Supreme Court made a landmark ruling on the obligation of soldiers to disobey manifestly illegal orders. Judge Halevy stated that "The distinguishing mark of a manifestly illegal order is that above such an order should fly, like a black flag, a warning saying: 'Prohibited!'."